Phyllis McGinley Quotes

Man proposes, woman forecloses.

I mean, what do people talk about when they're married?" "Their kids, I guess." "Maybe that's all they have in common.

I was never against marriage per se. Before feminism, I didn't think you had any choice. In fact, for a long time I always assumed I would get married. I just didn't see any marriages I wanted to emulate, so I kept putting it off.

That is partly why women marry - to keep up the fiction of being in the hub of things.

While I believe in marriage as an institution, I am also petrified of it.

A lot of the time when people get married in the infatuation, it will go down. That is inevitable. The infatuation stage will not last forever.

I'm a modern girl, but you should put your husband first. I like to think divorce is not an option.

A woman's place in public is to sit beside her husband, be silent, and be sure her hat is on straight.

But, alas! what poor Woman is ever taught that she should have a higher Design than to get her a Husband?

'Mr. Peanut' is not about a man who dreams of killing his wife; that's jacket copy, to me. 'Mr. Peanut' is about the dynamism of marriage and the distances - some tragic, some redemptive - that marriages travel over time, and those travels ain't always pretty.

Those who condemn gay marriage, yet are silent or indifferent to the breakdown of marriage and divorce, are, in my view, missing the real issue.

Women—one half the human race at least—care fifty times more for a marriage than for a ministry.

… the notion that gay marriage is harmful to marriage, is sort of mind-boggling, because these are people trying to get married. But it seems to me, if you want to defend marriage against something, defend it against divorce.

I wish I had some strapping football player husband. It would be such a dream to be 'normal' like that, but I'm just not.

There were many years when I didn't even know if I wanted to get married. I don't know if I believe in that institution, really.

Girls and boys also face the societal pressure to get married which I find wrong.

In marriage, a woman becomes the weaker sex, even if her husband doesn't want her to be. This happens because of the way society has built the institution.

I will get married to a guy of my parents' choice.

In the West, marriage is collapsing because it is based on love. And a marriage that is based on love is bound to fail. There is a reason for this: whenever two persons fall in love, both of them present what is beautiful in themselves to the other and hide the ugly. When you fall in love, whether you are a man or a woman, you show your most beautiful face to the other - but it is not your reality, it is not your totality.

I still think it's important for people to have a sharp, ongoing critique of marriage in patriarchal society — because once you marry within a society that remains patriarchal, no matter how alternative you want to be within your unit, there is still a culture outside you that will impose many, many values on you whether you want them to or not.

A woman dictates before marriage in order that she may have an appetite for submission afterwards.

Some women are born to be married, some achieve marriage, and others have marriage thrust upon them.

I don't think gay marriage is any threat to marriage. I think divorce is a bigger problem to marriage than anything else.

The Problem is: many terrific women have made themselves overqualified for the job of wife, because many men are looking for a woman with 'receptionist-level wife skills', not 'CEO-level wife skills'. Meaning: If a woman doesn't hang on a man's every word, is too independent, challenges his leadership, wants to create her own hours, demands emotional raises, then there won't be as many openings for the kind of wife position she is seeking. One of the big problems with marriages in the nineties: no room for two husbands.

Women have always been more critical of marriage than men. The great mysterious irony of it is - at least it's the stereotype - that women want to get married and men are trying to avoid it. Marriage doesn't benefit women as much as men, and it never has. And women, once they are married, become very critical of marriages in a way that men don't.